Favorite Quote

“Men do not attract what they want, but what they are.”

Main Idea

For any change to occur in our lives, the only thing we need to do is change our thoughts.

Review

I should definitely have a category for short little treasures and As A Man Thinketh by James Allen would be the first on the list. It definitely bears similarity with Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning in which the author is able to find meaning as a captive of a Holocaust camp at the time. On the other hand James Allen does not give any context to his book which implicitly means that As A Man Thinketh is intended for a Universal context.

At a glance it is easy to confuse the intention of this small work of art, with some vain feel good 5 minute technique. But, at the very opposite:

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”

The only logical conclusion is that those things we are not satisfied with in our own personal lives are the sole consequence of our own thought. We are the sole perpetrator.